4 Days in Musky Heaven

by Steve Heiting, Musky Hunter, February/March 2003

Outside the sliding glass door of our lodge room, the booming-yet-hollow sound was getting obnoxious. I reached for my glasses and put them on my face, then stumbled to the door and looked out.

Poom! Poom! The racket continued. As my eyes focused, the starlight revealed a black shape batting a culvert-like steel bear trap on the edge of the woods. I briefly opened the glass door for a better look, but the black shape turned and headed toward me so I quickly shut the door and flipped the latch.

“Kevin! Bear!” I hissed.

In moments, my friend Kevin Schmidt had popped out of his bed and was standing beside me watching the bear as it climbed on top of and rolled the trap. We watched for a couple of minutes, then returned to our beds.

“Think we’re tired?” Kevin chuckled. “We’ve got a bear outside our room and we can’t even stay awake to watch it.”

Darkness had fallen shortly before on what was the third of a 4-day musky fishing trip to northwestern Ontario. We’d already boated 13 muskies, yet our catch on our final day would, amazingly, nearly equal what we’d caught the three previous days. We needed our sleep, and fortunately the bear left in short order and we dozed off.

The next morning we were greeted by lodge owner George Halley who told us the bear trap behind his One Man Lake Lodge had been set to trap nuisance bears to relocate them to other islands. The bear we’d seen had tripped the trap and couldn’t get at the food inside, so in frustration it swatted and rolled the trap for nearly a half-hour.

Our bear story added yet another taste of adventure to our September 2002 outing, which was put together by the Ontario Muskie Alliance, a marketing cooperative comprised of 20 member resorts. The Alliance’s purpose is to spread the word about the province’s musky fishing opportunities.

The Alliance’s executive director, Gerry Cariou, told me he figured I’d “enjoy the trip of a lifetime.” Little did I know how true his words would be.

PRE-TURNOVER BONANZA
Cariou knew I’d already fished many of the lakes where Alliance-member resorts were located, and was pleased to find out that I spend a week each year on Lake of the Woods and Eagle Lake. So he set up the trip for waters I hadn’t yet visited and timed it to occur before turnover, a peak period anywhere.

Our hosts for the first two days of the trip were Marc and Judy Bechard, owners of Andy Lake Resort. While Andy Lake does not have muskies, the Bechards offer a boat cache on nearby Dryberry Lake for their musky clients.

For Days 3 and 4, we’d hop a float plane at River Air near Minaki and fly 15 minutes north to One Man Lake Lodge on the English River system. From there, we’d fly each day to Irregular Lake, which is one of the northern-most musky lakes in the world.

Driving northward on September 20, the weather was almost balmy, just as it had been for the entire month until that point. But forecasts called for a major weather-changing front and we packed enough clothes to remain warm regardless of the conditions. In fact, the first frost of the season occurred the night we watched the bear behind our lodge room.

Rather than shut down the fishing as cold fronts often do, this front turned the muskies on.

DAY 1
After spending the night of September 20 in Kenora, we drove the morning of September 21 to Andy Lake Resort where we net the Bechards. Marc had his boat ready to go and would serve as our guide for the day.

Dryberry Lake sprawls across some 18 miles of Canadian wilderness and its clear waters reach as deep as 400 feet. On the way Marc filled us in about its rich history, which at one time included a gold mine and a World War II prison camp that held German POWs.

“There was no need for much security because if on of the prisoners walked away he’d come back because there was nowhere for them to go.” Marc laughed. “In fact, many of them stayed after the war.”

After temperatures the day before reached almost 70 degrees, the high this day was about 50 with no clouds and a wind from the northwest that occasionally blew as hard as 25 mph. In spite of conditions that have resulted in tough fishing for me in the past, we did well on Dryberry.

Marc positioned the boat off windblown rocky shoreline points and we began seeing muskies almost from the start. White and blue baits seemed to be preferred. Just before lunch while fishing a rocky saddle between islands, Kevin bounced a night shiner DepthRaider off a rock about 10 feet down and his bait was pummeled by a good fish. In short order Kevin swung the brilliantly-colored musky around the bow of the boat, and when it was in reach I quickly scooped it. Marc then eased the boat to the protected side of the island for photos of what proved to be a 42-incher.

While that was certainly the highlight, by day’s end we’d counted 14 musky follows with three in the boat.

DAY 2
Overnight the wind refused to die and Kevin and I awoke to another cold day that probably never rose above 50 degrees. Intermittent rain showers blew through, and at one point a rainbow’s tail was plainly visible nearby on Dryberry’s surface.

After four hours of casting the same wind-blown points where we’d had our action the day before, we hadn’t had a follow to show for our efforts. So, figuring the fish were holding deeper, we backed the boat off the structure and began casting deeper water with crankbaits and trolling rock walls.

Immediately this new approach produced results when a 41-incher belted a white DepthRaider I was trolling, just as the lure glanced off a rock. After a few photos and release, we resumed trolling and my fish’s twin swatted Kevin’s DepthRaider. Hooked outside the mouth, the musky threw the bait just shy of the net.

Besides the two hooked trolling, we raised three muskies while casting rock points. Our 2-day total of four muskies caught and 19 seen would be a good effort anytime, but considering the lousy conditions in which we fished we thought the action was outstanding. We vowed to return to Dryberry Lake.

DAY 3
After saying goodbye to the Bechards, we departed for Minaki and River Air. There, we met George Halley, who quickly loaded our stuff aboard his pontooned Cessna. Then we were off for the 15-minute flight to One Man Lake Lodge.

George started flying float planes in the 1950s and became a commercial pilot in 1976. Since then, he’s logged over 11,000 hours in a float plane. “That’s a lot of 15-minute flights,” he smiled as we taxied to the dock.
After unloading, we were back in the air and on our way to Irregular Lake. George didn’t need to point out the lake because we spotted it from a distance. With bays and points everywhere, it was certainly well named.

The Halley family has had sole rights to a boat cache on Irregular Lake since 1983. Before then, numerous other resorts had boat caches, but a big forest fire swept through that year and burned everything near the lake with the exception of two small islands, in the process destroying every boat on the lake. Tiny bits of melted aluminum lying here and there on the rocks at the current boat cache were all that remained of the Halley’s’ boats that were caught in the conflagration.

“The fishing has greatly improved since the fire,” George said. “In the old days, people were keeping their limits of muskies, but now we’re putting them all back.”

If you want to fish Irregular Lake, you’re going to get to know the Halley family well or be ready to work hard to do it. The nearest road ends 50 miles from Irregular, and there’s no water route to get there unless you are willing to canoe-portage-canoe-portage for about a week. From the air, it was easy to see that when the glacier came through it cut the topography in such a way that flying in is the only viable method. The Halley’s have three 16-foot boats on Irregular equipped with 15 hp 4-strokes.

With George running the boat, it didn’t take long for us to find muskies. On our second spot, a 35-incher followed my ShallowRaider and then ate it as I swung the bait into a figure-8.

The remainder of the day remains a blur. With the cloudy skies and a southwest wind, we had plenty of good conditions. We first checked weed and weed/rock spots, and found these inhabited by countless northern pike, almost all longer than 30 inches all the way up to about 37. Pulling up to several weedbeds we’d spot several boils on the surface, and a quick cast in their direction resulted in a tight line and a good pike. Several times we enjoyed “triples,” in which all three of us were battling pike at the same time. The greatest concentration of muskies were in wind-blown rock areas and they responded best to fast-moving lures. After the minnowbait fish, Kevin and I caught all of our muskies on bucktails while George caught his on a frog-colored Len Thompson spoon trolled along the breakline.

At day’s end we’d tallied nine muskies with four exceeding 40 inches. Two 42-inchers were the largest.

DAY 4
Jokes about the previous night’s bear encounter greeted us the final morning as we sat down to breakfast. Though there was still frost on the dock, the temperature at One Man Lake Lodge had risen to 44 degrees by take-off, and skies were clear early but they clouded up as we touched down on Irregular. The southwest chop continued, and we had high hopes for the day.

Again, when you catch as many muskies as we were to boat on this day, it’s hard to keep track of who caught what when. We enjoyed a huge flurry of activity from about 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. with six muskies and numerous big pike finding their way to the boat. We estimated we boated 15 pike during the moon-set-induced outburst, all longer than 30 inches all the way up to 38 inches. During the hour-long slugfest George kept the boat positioned off two wind-buffeted island points that featured numerous large boulders out front. Amazingly, different fish showed themselves or struck with each pass we made. How many big predators were feeding in this relatively small area is anybody’s guess.

I feel a little funny saying this, but the action “slowed” some in the afternoon – yet we still boated another five muskies. The highlight occurred as George repositioned the boat after I’d caught a 3-footer and he tossed his frog-colored spoon out behind the boat. A huge set of jaws grabbed the spoon as it hit the water, and George was soon fast to a dandy musky that later stretched the tape a full 45 inches.

By day’s end we’d caught 11 muskies with three measuring longer than 40 inches. Our 2-day total for Irregular was 20 muskies, of which seven were 40 inches or longer. All of the muskies were at least 30 inches long, and 15 fit into the 35- to 42-inch size range. The 45-incher was clearly the largest fish we saw for the trip.

FOUR DAYS, 24 MUSKIES
A wilderness road to a pristine lake, float plane flights over the Canadian bush to a remote musky outpost, and a bear outside our lodge window combined to leave Kevin and me with fond memories of adventure. These are the bonuses of fishing Canadian waters.

And the fishing, well, was nothing short of fast, furious and fabulous. In four days we boated a total of 24 muskies, nine of which exceeded 40 inches. While we had hoped to encounter larger fish, we caught what the lakes offered when we were visiting. True giants have their own agendas, and you can’t make them bite when they don’t want to.

While it’s true that what we encountered on this trip was exceptional, the Canadian musky experience is something everyone should try at least once in their lifetime. And if you’re like me, your Canada trips will expand from once-in-a-lifetime to once-per-year to several-times-per-year. Canadian musky fishing will do that to you.